Anna Kelland: 2025 New Zealand Young Viticulturist of the Year brings science and passion to the vines

“Mum said that would be either a massage therapist or a winemaker,” she says with a laugh 17 years later, now Viticulture Technician at Constellation Brands New Zealand and 2025 New Zealand Young Viticulturist of the Year.

Winemaking ambitions soon switched to chemical engineering, but by her teenage years Anna had dismissed those job opportunities as dull.

“I thought, I still want to do something involved with chemistry, and wine science has a lot of chemistry involved.”

Having grown up surrounded by the Hawke’s Bay winegrowing industry, the driven young woman visited Eastern Institute of Technology when she was 14, and announced she was going to return
for the concurrent viticulture and wine science degrees.

In 2019 the Dux of Taradale High School did just that, kicking off four years of study, interspersed with work in vineyards and wineries, including a summer internship with Constellation Brands in Hawke’s Bay.

As she learned more about agrichemicals, and monitoring pest and disease risk, Anna became increasingly interested in the viticulture side of the industry, while also working winery vintages, and studying for her WSET Level 4 diploma.

She left EIT as valedictorian at the end of 2022 and grew her knowledge with a vintage lab role and work in a Hawke’s Bay cellar door, before becoming a viticulture technician at Constellation Brands in Marlborough in 2023.

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This year she worked as a vintage assistant winemaker with the company. “I was happy to get that experience and see not only what it’s like in other wineries, but also in our winery, where they process the grapes that I’m a part of growing. Seeing the full process was really fun to do.”

In 2024 Anna competed in the Marlborough Young Viticulturist of the Year, taking the regional win but missing out on the national title. This year she represented Marlborough once again at the national final, held on 27 August at Greystone in Waipara and concluding with the speech component at the New Zealand 2025 Wine Business Forum on 28 August.

Anna says there’s plenty of preparation and ambition required for the competition. Her work doesn’t require her to have tractor, trellising or other practical skills, so learning what operators are doing every day was a big part of her study. “I may not have had the opportunity to practice those skills without Young Viticulturist as a motivation.” Her win marks 20 years of the competition, and Anna is full of praise for an initiative that has been helping young viticulturists “to grow and get their names out there” for two decades. “It’s such an amazing opportunity, and I’m very, very grateful.”

It’s hardly surprising that Anna is not content to rest on her laurels, and she’s got plans to study for a master of agribusiness while also preparing for the Young Horticulturist of the Year competition in 2026. But in the wake of the Young Viticulturist final she took a break, putting her WSET knowledge to good use on a five-week holiday in Europe, including a winery tour in England, and tasting explorations in Italy and Germany.

Anna Kelland at the NZW Celebration.

Looking at the future, she says disease resistant varieties interest her, but she is also confident that Sauvignon Blanc remains the most exciting opportunity for New Zealand wine. People talk of Chenin Blanc or Albariño as “the next big thing”, but that’s been the line for the past 20 years, she says. “I think the next big thing for New Zealand is Sauvignon Blanc – it’s not going anywhere. The trend is going more towards lighter and fresher… going more towards what Sauvignon Blanc is known for.”

Her speech at the Business Forum set the scene for Marlborough in 2045, with options for automation in all areas of production, and the industry on track to achieve net zero emissions, while selected varieties offer vineyards resistance to extreme weather. “Sales are growing again in the ‘Re-United States of America’,”
she told the audience. “And despite everything the world has been through, they still, after all these years, have a taste for Marlborough wine.”

In the here and now, a 7-year-old’s predictions that a career in wine would make her parents happy are proving spot on. Anna made some garage wines in the 2025 vintage and sent some home to Hawke’s Bay. Her mum’s response? “Drinking a wine your daughter has made, this is the dream.”